Republican gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie is airing a misleading TV ad in Virginia that says Democrat Ralph Northam was the “deciding vote” in “favor of sanctuary cities that let dangerous illegal immigrants back on the streets.”

It’s true that Northam, as the state’s lieutenant governor, cast a tie-breaking vote against a Republican-sponsored bill banning the establishment of so-called sanctuary cities. But the ad doesn’t tell the whole story of the bill, which ultimately passed the Senate despite Northam’s “deciding vote.”

It also ignores the fact that Gillespie himself has said the state doesn’t have sanctuary cities — the very thing that the bill was designed to stop.

Gillespie, a former Republican National Committee chairman, is running against Northam in the race to succeed Democrat Terry McAuliffe as governor of Virginia.

“MS-13 is a menace, yet Ralph Northam voted in favor of sanctuary cities that let dangerous illegal immigrants back on the street, increasing the threat of MS-13,” a narrator says, referring to a criminal gang in Virginia and other states. A graphic shown on screen says Northam’s was the “deciding vote in favor of sanctuary cities.”

This isn’t the first time the Gillespie campaign referenced Northam’s vote.

On Aug. 30, the campaign released its first ad claiming that Northam “cast the deciding vote in favor of sanctuary cities that let illegal immigrants who commit crimes back on the street.” A day later, the Northam campaign responded with a TV ad saying that Gillespie’s attack ad was “not true.”

It’s true, however, that Northam voted against the bill in question. But his was hardly the final say in the matter.

The ads from Gillespie’s campaign refer to HB 2000, which was introduced by Republican state Del. Charles Poindexter in January. The one-sentence bill states: “No locality shall adopt any ordinance, procedure, or policy that restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws.”

As lieutenant governor, Northam only votes in the case of a tie in the state Senate. That happened when Thomas Norment, the Republican majority leader, voted with Democrats against the bill, causing a 20-20 split. (Republicans have a 21-19 majority.)

After Northam’s subsequent “nay” vote momentarily killed the bill, Norment moved to hold another vote. The bill proceeded to pass when Norment switched sides and voted with his fellow Republicans. The bill, which also passed in the House of Delegates, was later vetoed by McAuliffe, the Democratic governor.

Northam’s team accused Norment of plotting to force the lieutenant governor to make a vote that would later become irrelevant.

“Norment declined to comment, and later grinned as a reporter tried to coax out information on whether the Senate majority leader was colluding with the Gillespie campaign to set up the lieutenant governor,” according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

But all of that information would not be clear to viewers of the ads. It was McAuliffe, not Northam, who stopped the bill outlawing sanctuary policies from becoming law. Northam and other Democrats voted against the bill because, they said, it was unnecessary.

“The fact is, Ed Gillespie and Richmond Republicans know there are no sanctuary cities in Virginia,” Northam said about attacks on his vote, according to the Times-Dispatch.

As Virginia Public Radio wrote in late August: “People define sanctuary cities a variety of ways. If the definition is a city that defies immigration law, then Virginia has no sanctuary cities. If the definition is that a city refuses to detain some immigrants until federal officials can pick them up, Virginia has several of those. But they’re not violating any law by refusing to hold suspects without a warrant.”

“It is my opinion that an ICE detainer is merely a request,” Herring wrote. “It does not create for a law enforcement agency either an obligation or legal authority to maintain custody of a prisoner who is otherwise eligible for immediate release from local or state custody. For that reason, an adult inmate or a juvenile inmate with a fixed release date should be released from custody on that date notwithstanding the agency’s receipt of an ICE detainer.”

Even Gillespie has said that Virginia doesn’t actually have sanctuary cities.

“I agree we don’t have any,” Gillespie said when talking about immigration at a Virginia Bar Association debate with Northam in July. That was after Gillespie said he doesn’t “believe that cities or counties should be free to pick and choose, you know, what [federal immigration] laws they enforce, and declare themselves a sanctuary city.”

Gillespie has said that, if he were governor, he would have signed HB 2000.

That said, his ads give the impression that Northam’s vote was the final word on a bill to prevent Virginia localities from adopting sanctuary policies that Gillespie has said they don’t currently have.

In fact, Northam wasn’t able to keep the bill from passing, and he would have never been able to vote had Norment, the Republican leader, supported the bill on the first vote.

In the end, it was McAuliffe, the Democratic governor, who vetoed the bill, and Republicans didn’t have enough votes to overturn his decision.

]]>World Opinion of Trump and U.S.http://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/world-opinion-trump-u-s/
Tue, 26 Sep 2017 19:02:06 +0000http://www.factcheck.org/?p=130088At a campaign rally in Alabama, President Donald Trump said “the world is starting to respect the United States of America again." Surveys suggest otherwise.

At a campaign rally in Alabama, President Donald Trump said “the world is starting to respect the United States of America again.” Surveys suggest otherwise.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project found that citizens in 35 out of 37 countries have less confidence in Trump than they did in former President Obama. In some cases, far less confidence.

For example, 86 percent of Germans said they had “a lot of confidence” or “some confidence” in Obama, but only 11 percent said the same of Trump.

Separately, the Pew Global Attitudes Project measures foreign opinion of the United States. That survey found that only two of the 37 countries have a more favorable opinion of the United States since Trump took office.

Trump, Sept. 22: It’s one of the greatest honors of my life to represent the American people on that world stage. And I will tell you, the world is starting to respect the United States of America again.

We cannot find any surveys that measure “respect,” and the White House could not provide any. However, the Pew Global Attitudes Project since 2002 has been tracking world confidence in U.S. presidents and world opinion of the U.S. in general. Pew reports a sharp decline in both.

In June, the Pew Research Center released the results of its surveys in 37 countries and found that among those nations “a median of just 22% has confidence in Trump to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs.” By contrast, “a median of 64% expressed confidence” in Obama.

The decline in confidence in the U.S. president has been severe in some countries since Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017, and it “is especially pronounced among some of America’s closest allies in Europe and Asia, as well as neighboring Mexico and Canada,” Pew found.

In addition to Germany, which we mentioned earlier, only 14 percent of French citizens surveyed said they had “a lot of confidence” or “some confidence” in Trump — a drop of 70 percentage points from the 84 percent that expressed confidence in Obama.

The biggest decline was in Sweden. Pew found 93 percent of those surveyed expressed confidence in Obama, but only 10 percent said the same of Trump.

The Pew survey shows that Trump received “higher marks than Obama in only two countries: Russia and Israel.” The increase was particularly pronounced in Russia, where 53 percent of those surveyed said they had confidence in Trump. Only 11 percent had expressed confidence in Obama.

The lack of confidence in the current U.S. president is also having an impact on the image of the U.S. in general.

“In countries where confidence in the U.S. president fell most, America’s overall image has also tended to suffer more,” Pew reports. “In the closing years of the Obama presidency, a median of 64% had a positive view of the U.S. Today, just 49% are favorably inclined toward America. Again, some of the steepest declines in U.S. image are found among long-standing allies.”

The steepest decline was in Mexico, where only 30 percent of those surveyed said that they had a favorable view of the United States — down from 66 percent in 2016.

“Favorability ratings have only increased in Russia and Vietnam,” Pew reported.

The Pew Research Center surveyed 40,448 people in 37 countries from Feb. 16 to May 8, 2017.

]]>No Nationwide Sharia Banhttp://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/no-nationwide-sharia-ban/
Mon, 25 Sep 2017 23:32:33 +0000http://www.factcheck.org/?p=130022Q: Has a judge banned Sharia law across the United States? A: No. The judge pictured with a bogus headline proclaiming a nationwide ban was the host of a daytime […]

A: No. The judge pictured with a bogus headline proclaiming a nationwide ban was the host of a daytime court TV show.

FULL ANSWER

A headline proclaiming that a judge has banned Sharia law in all 50 states is not true and the story that goes along with it appears to have been rehashed from 2015.

An article posted on usaviralnews.info on Sept. 15 carried the headline, “BREAKING: American Judge Just Banned Sharia Law In All 50 States. Do You Support This?” Appearing immediately below the headline is a picture of a man in a black judge’s robe with his arms crossed. The picture is of Alex Ferrer, who hosted a daytime court TV show called “Judge Alex.”

The story, which was flagged by Facebook users as potentially fabricated news, closely matches one that ran on Breitbart.com on Jan. 27, 2015 about an Islamic tribunal set up near Dallas, Texas. But both stories say nothing about a nationwide ban on Sharia law.

Contrary to the headline, the accompanying story on usaviralnews.info only makes reference to a voluntary Islamic tribunal in Texas that Breitbart and a local CBS station in Dallas reported on in 2015. According to the CBS report, the tribunal offers to settle cases involving divorce, business disagreements and other civil disputes among Muslims using Sharia law, which is based on the tenets of Islam. Participation in the tribunal is voluntary and its judgments are non-binding and separate from the findings of any local, state or federal court.

A similar headline claiming that Sharia law had been banned in all 50 states also appeared on a website called Californianews.co on Sept. 18. That story included a description of a petition to increase awareness of “the ‘Creeping Sharia’ threat to America,” but the petition wasn’t available on the site.

Although both headlines claim that there has been a sweeping, nationwide ruling that would ban the use of Sharia law in the U.S., there has been no such ruling. As of July, a total of 11 states had enacted legislation prohibiting the use of foreign or religious laws in state courts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In June, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that will require the state Supreme Court to adopt rules and provide judicial instructions related to the use of foreign law in family court proceedings.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to help identify and label viral fake news stories flagged by readers on the social media network.

]]>What ‘China’ Ads in Virginia Race Omithttp://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/china-ads-virginia-race-omit/
Mon, 25 Sep 2017 17:48:08 +0000http://www.factcheck.org/?p=129630Television ads in the Virginia governor's race criticize Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam for his role on a state economic development board. But there is less here than meets the eye.

Television ads in the Virginia governor’s race criticize Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam for his role on a state economic development board. But there is less here than meets the eye:

The ads say Northam missed 58 percent of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership meetings. Northam was an ex officio member of the board and sits on 13 other boards. Northam or his representative attended all VEDP board meetings.

The ads also say Northam “helped lead Virginia’s economic development agency that gave $1.4 million to a Chinese company with a fake website.” However, the board does not approve grants, which are recommended by staff and approved by the governor.

Virginia and New Jersey are the only two states with gubernatorial elections in 2017. In Virginia, Republican Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, faces Northam, a Democrat who has served as the state’s lieutenant governor since 2014. Recent pollingshows the Virginia race remains close.

‘China Wins’

The Gillespie campaign has run two TV ads in recent days that focus on a $1.4 million state economic grant to a Beijing-based company for a failed project in Appomattox County.

The ad says, “China wins, America loses. It’s a story that Virginia families know all too well. Ralph Northam’s made things worse. Northam helped lead Virginia’s economic development agency that gave $1.4 million to a Chinese company with a fake website. Virginia taxpayers got ripped off.”

The facts about the project are accurate. Virginia awarded Lindenburg Industry, a Chinese manufacturing company, a $1.4 million economic incentive grant in 2014 for a plant that would manufacture industrial clean-air products. The $113 million project was supposed to create 349 jobs.

But the project never materialized, and the agency confirmed for us that the funds were not recovered — a point that is made in Gillespie’s TV ads.

But the ad overplays Northam’s role in the awarding of the $1.4 million grant for the Appomattox project.

The ad says Northam “helped lead” the agency. As lieutenant governor, Northam was an ex officio member of the board — one of 24 voting members at the time. He also sits on 13 other boards.

The VEDP board has no direct role in the grant process. The agency is run by a professional staff, which in most cases “has discretion over which businesses receive grant awards and the amount awarded, pending final approval by the Governor,” according to a 2016 management audit of the agency by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission.

The Governor’s Development Opportunity Fund — now known as the Commonwealth’s Development Opportunity Fund, or COP Fund — was the source of the $1.4 million. The “final approval authority” for that fund is the governor (see table C-1 of the 2016 management audit).

Gov. Terry McAuliffe was instrumental in awarding the grant, according to agency records.

The agency lists the Lindenburg project among its “case studies.” In its description of the project, the agency says: “This project is a result of Governor McAuliffe’s meeting with company officials in China during VEDP’s Asia Marketing Mission.”

When he announced the grant on Nov. 5, 2014, McAuliffe said: “I had the great privilege of meeting with company officials in Beijing, China and close this significant win during my Asia marketing mission and I am thrilled that Lindenburg Industry is establishing their first U.S. manufacturing operation in Virginia.”

The Gillespie campaign, in response to our questions about the ad, said Northam should be held accountable for the board’s failure to provide oversight on the Lindenburg project. It referred us to the 2016 management audit.

That report said the board has a history of failing to provide effective oversight since the economic development agency was established in 1995 by then-Gov. George Allen. “The board has historically not held VEDP sufficiently accountable, largely due to members’ lack of engagement and apparent misunderstanding of their governing responsibilities,” the report says.

The audit commission recommended that the Legislature amend the statute governing the VEDP to make clear that the board “is a supervisory board and is responsible for ensuring that VEDP executes all of its statutory responsibilities efficiently and effectively.”

We also note that the report says that improvements have been made to the board since 2014, which is when Northam joined the board.

“The board’s demonstrated efforts to improve its level of engagement since 2014 represent an important and necessary step forward with respect to the governance and oversight — and therefore the accountability — of VEDP,” the report said.

The audit commission did an analysis of 133 projects from fiscal year 2006 to fiscal year 2015, saying the agency “has not sought repayment for 23 projects that did not meet their contractual requirements, totaling an estimated $8.7 million.” It also said that nearly half — 46 percent — of the 133 projects “did not meet all [contractual] requirements.”

On the Lindenburg Industry grant, the audit blamed the VEDP professional staff for failing “to validate the legitimacy of a company that received a $1.4 million COF grant in November 2014.”

The meeting minutes showed that Northam attended five meetings and sent staff to seven. So while the ad says that Northam “skipped 58 percent” of the meetings, it fails to say that the lieutenant governor’s office was represented at 100 percent of the meetings.

As we mentioned earlier, Northam was an ex officio member of the board. He also sits on 13 other boards and serves as the Senate president, presiding over the Senate sessions.

It’s not uncommon for high-ranking ex officio members to send staff to represent them on the boards that are assigned to them by virtue of their position.

It’s also not uncommon for elected officials to be criticized for not attending meetings, even if they send someone else in their place. In fact, board attendance has been an issue in previous Virginia campaigns, and both parties have used it as an attack line.

In 2009, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, Jody Wagner, criticized then-Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling at an Oct. 19, 2009, debate for attending only 6 percent of the meetings for seven state boards and commissions.

“These are critical times, and we need a lieutenant governor who’s going to show up every day and work full time to make sure we’re moving the commonwealth of Virginia forward,” Wagner said.

Bolling, a Republican, called the attack on his board attendance “a classic example of the distortion, the dishonesty and, quite frankly, the hypocrisy” of a failing campaign. He also noted that “a member of my staff” attended meetings he missed – that’s what happened in Northam’s case as well. But the Gillespie campaign ad does not say that (and neither does a similar ad on Northam’s board attendance paid for by the conservative Americans for Prosperity.)

In fact, both Gillespie ads don’t tell the full story. That’s why we present a more complete story about Northam’s role on the board. We leave it for Virginia voters to make up their own minds about Northam’s culpability in the agency’s decisions, particularly as it pertains to the $1.4 million that state voters lost on the Appomattox project.

CNN’s report that federal investigators “wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort” has prompted some readers to ask why we don’t “correct” our March 6 article “Examining Trump’s Wiretap Claim.” Simply put, there is nothing to correct at this time.

Let’s start at the beginning.

In four tweets on March 4, President Donald Trump alleged “President Obama was tapping my phones in October, just prior to Election!” Trump called this a “fact,” and compared the alleged wiretapping to the criminal acts of “Nixon/Watergate.”

Here are Trump’s tweets:

Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

In his tweets, the president leveled specific and serious allegations about Obama, accusing the former president of criminal wrongdoing. His allegations were roundly rebutted by people in a position to know, including then-FBI Director James Comey.

In an update to our March 6 story, we noted that Comey on March 20 told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the Department of Justice and the FBI had no information to support Trump’s tweets that the Obama administration wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower. The committee is among those — including special prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III — investigating Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump’s campaign associates were aware and involved in Russia’s efforts. (See “Timeline of Russia Investigation” for details of the various investigations.)

“With respect to the president’s tweets about alleged wiretapping directed at him by the prior administration, I have no information that supports those tweets and we have looked carefully inside the FBI,” Comey said. “The Department of Justice has asked me to share with you that the answer is the same for the Department of Justice and all its components. The department has no information that supports those tweets.”

This month, the Department of Justice repeated that statement in a court filing.

A watchdog group called American Oversight filed suit against the Department of Justice in April, seeking to obtain any documents related to the alleged wiretaps as described in Trump’s March 4 tweets. On Sept. 1, the Justice Department filed a summary motion seeking to have the suit dismissed, saying the FBI and the National Security Division confirmed they had no record that would support Trump’s tweets.

“Both FBI and NSD confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets,” the Justice Department motion said. “FBI again confirmed that they do not have any such records by consulting with personnel knowledgeable about Director Comey’s statements and the surveillance activities of the FBI.”

Less than three weeks later, CNN reported on Sept. 19 that federal investigators “wiretapped former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort under secret court orders before and after the election,” citing unnamed sources. Some havecited the CNN story as evidence that Trump was right. It isn’t.

The CNN story does not support the president’s tweets for the same reasons that we outlined in another story we published on March 23, “Still No Evidence, Mr. President,” when the president last claimed he had been vindicated.

At that time, the president said “new information” obtained by Rep. Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, “means I’m right.” (It was later reported by the New York Times that the White House provided Nunes with this new information.) During a March 22 interview with Time magazine, the president paraphrased passages of a Politico story that appeared on its website that day. Trump said, “Members of the Donald Trump Transition team possibly including Trump himself were under [inadvertent] surveillance during the Obama administration following November’s election. House intelligence chairman Devin Nunes told reporters, wow. Nunes said, so that means I’m right.”

Trump left out the word “inadvertent,” which we inserted above in brackets. That’s important, because Nunes said he reviewed “intelligence reports” that showed “incidental collection” on some unnamed Trump transition team members after the election in November, December and January. Nunes said he believed the incidental collection of information was legally obtained.

Here’s why Nunes’ “new evidence” in March and CNN’s story in September do not support the president’s tweets:

There is still no evidence that Obama ordered wiretapping of Trump or Trump Tower. Trump misrepresented the process in his tweets. Under the law, the Justice Department and FBI submit a request to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, which authorizes the wiretapping. Obama would have no role in requesting or approving a wiretap. The CNN story said that the Justice Department and FBI obtained a FISA court order to conduct surveillance of Manafort – not Trump. And there’s no evidence that even Manafort was wiretapped while at Trump Tower. The CNN story said, “While Manafort has a residence in Trump Tower, it’s unclear whether FBI surveillance of him took place there.”

There is no evidence that any of Trump’s conversations were picked up by the FBI, but if they were that would have been “incidental collection” of information. Nunes said in March that he reviewed “intelligence reports” that show “incidental collection” on some unnamed Trump transition team members. Nunes said he did not know if any of Trump’s conversations were picked up during surveillance. The CNN story also said, “It’s unclear whether Trump himself was picked up on the surveillance.”

Incidental collection of information is legal with a FISA court order. Trump claimed that Obama was responsible for illegal Watergate-style wiretapping, but CNN wrote that the FISA court authorized the wiretapping of Manafort. That would make the incidental collection of information on Trump, or anyone else, perfectly legal. Nunes made the same point in March.

We don’t know exactly when the alleged wiretapping of Manafort occurred. The CNN story said there were two instances when the FBI obtained a FISA warrant. The first was in 2014, before Manafort joined the Trump campaign. But CNN said that “it is unclear when the new warrant started.” Did it occur while Manafort was a member of the Trump campaign team? Did it occur during “the very sacred election process,” as Trump tweeted? We don’t know.

There is still much that we don’t know about the ongoing federal investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign. It may be that Manafort — as CNN reported — was the target of a court-ordered wiretap. It may even turn out that Trump was inadvertently picked up if he spoke to Manafort when the court order was in place.

But there is no evidence to support Trump’s tweets accusing Obama of illegally wiretapping his phones. That was the case in March, and it remains so. However, we will continue to monitor developments and provide updates when necessary.

]]>The Preexisting Conditions Debate, Againhttp://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/preexisting-conditions-debate-2/
Fri, 22 Sep 2017 20:08:19 +0000http://www.factcheck.org/?p=129917Republicans and Democrats are making competing claims on whether the latest GOP effort to repeal the ACA continues to protect those with preexisting medical conditions. Under the Graham-Cassidy bill, insurers couldn't refuse to sell policies, but they could price plans based on health status in states that allowed it.

Once again, Republicans and Democrats are making competing claims on whether the latest GOP effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act continues to protect those with preexisting medical conditions. Under the Graham-Cassidy bill, insurers couldn’t refuse to sell policies, but they could price plans based on health status in states that allowed it.

Politicians have glossed over the finer points of the legislation, just as we saw several months ago when House Republicans were about to pass their health care bill.

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, a sponsor of the latest Senate bill, falsely said on CNN that the “protection is absolutely the same” as the ACA regarding preexisting conditions. It isn’t. The ACA, unlike Graham-Cassidy, doesn’t allow state waivers to price premiums based on medical conditions.

President Donald Trump said on Twitter that “I would not sign Graham-Cassidy if it did not include coverage of pre-existing conditions. It does!” Sen. Lindsey Graham said that “factually, our bill requires preexisting illnesses to be covered in the block grant.” But those comments ignore the potential that premiums could be higher for those with health issues.

Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor that “the ban on discriminating against people with preexisting conditions would be gone.” Not completely.

And while Sen. Al Franken correctly explained the details of state waivers in the bill, he added the sweeping claim that “there would be no protections for people with preexisting conditions.” There are some, and the impact depends on what states decide to do.

The Graham-Cassidy legislation would eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies for low-income people buying coverage on the individual market, as well as federal funding for the expansion of Medicaid, and instead provide block grants to states, starting in 2020. Those block grants could be used for a variety of health insurance measures, including programs for high-risk individuals, cost-sharing assistance and improving premiums on the individual market. (For more details on the bill, see our story “The Facts on the GOP Health Care Bills.”)

The legislation says states must submit applications explaining how they would spend the block grant funds and, if necessary, describe any waivers that they’re requesting. A state could waive the ACA’s ban on pricing insurance policies based on health status, provided it described “how the State intends to maintain access to adequate and affordable health insurance coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions if such waiver is approved.”

States could allow insurers to vary premiums, including “on the basis of any health status-related factor,” but not on the basis of gender, race or religion. Here is the language in the legislation describing what provisions states could waive for the block grant funds:

Graham-Cassidy legislation: (I) Any provision that restricts the criteria which a health insurance issuer may use to vary premium rates for health insurance coverage offered in the individual or small group market, or the degree to which an issuer may vary such rates, except that a health insurance issuer may not vary premium rates based on an individual’s sex or membership in a protected class under the Constitution of the United States.

(II) Any provision that prevents a health insurance issuer offering a coverage plan in the individual or small group market from requiring an individual to pay a premium or contribution (as a condition of enrollment or continued enrollment under the plan) which is greater than such premium or contribution for a similarly situated individual enrolled in the plan on the basis of any health status-related factor in relation to the individual or to an individual enrolled under the plan as a dependent of the individual.

The bill doesn’t eliminate, or allow states to waive, the ACA’s prohibition on insurers denying coverage to those with preexisting conditions, or the prohibition on insurers excluding coverage of preexisting conditions, as the Kaiser Family Foundation’s summary of the legislation explains.

So, it’s not true that there are “no protections,” as Franken said. Nor is it true that the “protection is absolutely the same,” as Cassidy said on CNN. He went on to say: “There’s a specific provision that says that if a state applies for a waiver, it must ensure that those with preexisting conditions have affordable and adequate coverage.”

That’s different from current law.

Under the ACA, states can request waivers from some of the law’s insurance provisions, but they can’t get a waiver from the requirement that insurers price policies the same, regardless of health status. “No state can waive that requirement,” Sabrina Corlette, research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, said in a phone interview with FactCheck.org.

Corlette points out that allowing insurers to charge consumers different premiums based on health status — which is what occurred on the individual market before the ACA — could affect not only those who now have preexisting conditions, but anyone who develops a health condition in the future. When it’s time to renew a policy, the premium could go up.

Under Graham-Cassidy, states would have to explain how they intend “to maintain access to adequate and affordable” insurance, as Cassidy said, but it remains to be seen what would be considered “adequate and affordable.” The bill doesn’t provide any additional details on that; the Department of Health and Human Services could issue regulations on how states would meet that requirement if the bill became law.

Both Graham-Cassidy and the ACA allow states to waive the ACA’s 10 essential health benefits requirements. However, under the ACA, a state waiver plan must “provide coverage that is at least as comprehensive,” “at least as affordable” and “provide[s] coverage to at least a comparable number of its residents,” the law says. (For more on the ACA’s Section 1332 waivers, see this July issue brief by the Kaiser Family Foundation.)

Graham-Cassidy provides more leeway for states to change those benefits. In fact, Corlette said states that have wanted to relax the benefit requirements have complained that it’s not possible under the ACA’s standard that coverage be “at least as comprehensive.”

The Senate could vote on the legislation next week, but it’s unclear if it would have the necessary Republican votes to pass, particularly since Sen. John McCain said he would vote against it.

]]>Natural Born Bunkhttp://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/natural-born-bunk/
Fri, 22 Sep 2017 19:58:58 +0000http://www.factcheck.org/?p=129802Q: Have Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Keith Olbermann introduced a bill that would do away with the requirement that the U.S. president be a natural born citizen? A: No. Pelosi’s […]

Q: Have Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Keith Olbermann introduced a bill that would do away with the requirement that the U.S. president be a natural born citizen?

A: No. Pelosi’s office confirmed that she has not, and Olbermann is not even a member of Congress.

FULL ANSWER

Congress is not considering a bill that would allow noncitizens to become president, although a story gaining traction on the internet claims it is.

The story, published on Sept. 18 on a website registered to an owner in Macedonia, says that Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, and Keith Olbermann, a political commentator and former television news anchor, had introduced a bill that would strike the constitutional requirement that the president be a natural born citizen.

“Democrat Congressmen Pelosi and Keith Olbermann introduced H.B. 2169-B, which would remove the requirement that the President be born here,” says the story that appeared on Americannews88.com.

The post on that website was flagged as potentially fabricated news on Facebook, but a similar story appeared four days earlier on thelastlineofdefense.org, which describes itself as a satirical website and says in a disclaimer that its stories “present fiction as fact.”

The story suggests that the reason for the proposed change is that Democrats will need to draw from a much wider field than they currently have in order to find a candidate who could take on President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

Pelosi’s office, however, confirmed to FactCheck.org that she has proposed no such change. No other member of Congress has put forth such a bill, either.

Also, bills that originate in the House of Representatives are identified by the letters H.R. followed by a number, but the Americannews88.com story refers to the bill as H.B. 2169-B. Congress is considering a bill numbered H.R. 2169, but it concerns the Department of Homeland Security, not the citizenship of the president.

Changing the natural born citizenship requirement for the presidency would actually require a constitutional amendment, which would be done through a joint resolution rather than a bill. That resolution would have to pass both houses of Congress, with two-thirds of the members of each in favor of it, and then be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to help identify and label viral fake news stories flagged by readers on the social media network.

]]>Misquoting FactCheck.orghttp://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/misquoting-factcheck-org/
Thu, 21 Sep 2017 20:24:17 +0000http://www.factcheck.org/?p=129789To set the record straight, FactCheck.org did not call the allegation that longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone had advance notice about hacked Democratic emails "false," as Stone claimed in a recent op-ed. We said it is "not an established fact."

To set the record straight, FactCheck.org did not call the allegation that longtime Donald Trump associate Roger Stone had advance notice about hacked Democratic emails “false,” as Stone claimed in a recent op-ed. We said it is “not an established fact.”

There’s a difference.

In a piece written for InfoWars, Stone said he is anxious to testify before the House intelligence committee on Sept. 26 to refute “allegations in public session that I had advance notice of either the hacking of Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails or advanced knowledge of the content of material published by WikiLeaks that proved embarrassing to the campaign of Hillary Clinton.”

Stone then cited us to back that up. “As Factcheck.org, a non-partisan news organization funded by the Annenberg Foundation concluded on March 28th, 2017 both assertions are false,” Stone wrote.

The first assertion, that Stone had advance knowledge of the hacking of Podesta’s emails, is based on an Aug. 21, 2016, tweet: “Trust me, it will soon [be] Podesta’s time in the barrel.”

We don’t know what Roger Stone knew or didn’t know about the hacked Democratic National Committee emails before they were publicly released by WikiLeaks. But we concluded that Stone’s Aug. 21, 2016, tweet was not, in and of itself, proof that Stone had been tipped off about the hacked emails.

So far, that’s all that has been made public to back up the speculation that Stone knew about Podesta’s hacked emails.

Stone, who noted that he is testifying before the House committee voluntarily and that he has neither requested nor received immunity, is referring to our story on March 28,”Misrepresenting Stone’s Prescience.” In that article, we challenged one aspect of a circumstantial case that Rep. Adam Schiff laid out to question whether Trump’s campaign associates may have colluded with the Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“Is it a coincidence that Roger Stone predicted that John Podesta would be a victim of a Russian hack and have his private emails published, and did so even before Mr. Podesta himself was fully aware that his private emails would be exposed?” Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in his opening statement at a March 20 hearing.

But as we wrote, “There is nothing in the public record so far that proves Stone, a political operative and longtime Trump associate, predicted the Podesta email hack.”

Schiff’s speculation assumes that Stone’s tweet was predicting the release of the Podesta emails two months later by WikiLeaks. But Stone has denied the tweet had anything to do with Podesta’s emails. Rather, Stone said, his tweet referred to Podesta’s business dealings with Russia, and the expectation that that would become a news story. The tweet makes no direct reference to Podesta’s email.

FactCheck.org, March 28: Schiff is free to question what Stone meant by the tweet. But in the intelligence hearing, Schiff stated as a matter of fact that Stone predicted the release of Podesta’s hacked emails, and questioned whether Stone’s prediction was a coincidence or evidence of collusion with Russia. More information may emerge as a result of FBI and congressional investigations, but based on what is currently in the public domain, it’s not an established fact that Stone knew in advance that Podesta’s emails were hacked and would be published in October.

No new evidence has emerged since then.

We should note that Hillary Clinton engaged in similar speculation this week during an appearance on the “Today Show” on NBC. When talking about possible collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign, Clinton referred to Stone’s tweet and asked, “How would [Stone] have known that?” (Her statement appears at the 6:50 mark of the first video.)

Hillary Clinton, “Today Show,” Sept. 13: And we know that there was a lot of interesting coincidences, if you will, between what people associated with Trump were saying at the time and what later came to pass. I mean, you had a Trump associate saying in August, “Oh, John Podesta is going to end up in the barrel.” Well, how would he have known that? The Russians hacked those emails. They stole them.

What we wrote about Schiff’s comment applies to Clinton’s comments as well. There is no evidence in the public record so far that shows that Stone was referring to the hacked Podesta emails.

But we also did not conclude that such speculation is “false.” That goes too far.

Stone also goes too far when he claims that we deemed “false” the assertion that he had “advanced knowledge of the content of material published by WikiLeaks that proved embarrassing to the campaign of Hillary Clinton.”

The issue here is a series of direct Twitter messages that Stone privately exchanged with Guccifer 2.0 — who took credit for the DNC hack — and boasts by Stone in August 2016 that he had communicated with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published the emails. Both Guccifer 2.0 and Assange were deemed to have acted as proxies for Russian intelligence to release emails damaging to the Clinton campaign, according to a declassified intelligence community assessment released on Jan. 6.

Stone said that he published all of the messages between himself and Guccifer 2.0. We cannot independently verify that, but none of the publicly released messages proves Stone had advanced knowledge of the content of hacked emails.

Stone said in a speech on Aug. 8 that he had “communicated with Assange” and that he believed “the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.”

Stone later clarified that he never spoke directly with Assange, but that the two have a mutual journalist friend who told him in August that Assange “has the mother lode on Hillary [Clinton]” and that those emails would be released in October. But Stone said the intermediary was no more specific than that. Stone said he was merely speculating that the emails would have something to do with the Clinton Foundation.

We don’t know if Stone had further or more substantive communications with either Guccifer 2.0 or Assange. That is likely part of the congressional committee’s ongoing investigation. But even though there remains no concrete evidence in the public record that proves Stone had advance notice about the hacked emails, we can’t say those allegations are false either. We’ll update this post if more evidence emerges.

We should note that in a nearly identical op-ed published by USA Today a day earlier, Stone more accurately states: “FactCheck.org, a non-partisan news organization, reported that those allegations are not established by the record.” USA Today Deputy Editorial Page Editor David Mastio told us, “We asked Stone to write the piece we published to go with our editorial making the opposite point as is our practice every day. Just as with every opposing view and column we run, Stone’s submission was edited for style and accuracy in a collaborative process.” We don’t know whether the wording was changed in the editorial process, but we wanted to set the record straight that the wording in the InfoWars op-ed is inaccurate on this point.

]]>Did Air Quality Improve Under Obama?http://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/air-quality-improve-obama/
Thu, 21 Sep 2017 20:20:39 +0000http://www.factcheck.org/?p=129551EPA head Scott Pruitt criticized former President Barack Obama for leaving 40 percent of Americans with air quality that doesn't meet EPA standards. But a report Pruitt’s office cited as evidence said there had been a "major improvement" in air quality under Obama.

Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt criticized former President Barack Obama for leaving 40 percent of Americans with air quality that doesn’t meet EPA standards. By some measures, this is true. But a report Pruitt’s office cited as evidence said there had been a “major improvement” in air quality under Obama.

The American Lung Association’s 2017 air quality report does say that 38.9 percent of the population was breathing “unhealthy air,” based on EPA data from 2013 to 2015 for two of the most common air pollutants. However, that figure is down from 58 percent of the population before Obama took office.

Pruitt also failed to mention that the Obama administration updated the standard for four out of the six air pollutants that the EPA regulates under the Clean Air Act, one of which hadn’t changed since the early 1970s, when the act was first put into law.

Pruitt made his claim on Sept. 11 during an interview with the Washington Examiner:

Pruitt, Sept. 11: Everybody looks at the Obama Administration as being the environmental savior. Really? He was the environmental savior? He’s the gold standard, right? He left us with more Superfund sites than when he came in. Air quality standards, 40 percent of the country, nonattainment.

This isn’t the first time Pruitt has criticized Obama’s environmental record. In May, he cited the same 40 percent figure on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, adding, “What exactly did [the Obama administration] accomplish for the environment that folks are so excited about?”

Pruitt has a right to his opinion that the Obama administration shouldn’t be the “gold standard” for environmental protection. But he cites a statistic — that 40 percent of Americans live in nonattainment areas — without providing any context. In fact, there’s evidence of improvement in air quality under Obama.

(Pruitt also isn’t telling the whole story when it comes to Obama’s action on Superfund sites, which are areas that have been contaminated by hazardous waste. The EPA identifies these sites for cleanup when they could impact human health or the environment. But we’ll be explaining the ins and outs of that issue in a future article.)

Air Quality Improves with Clean Air Act

There are a number of different ways to evaluate whether air quality has gotten better or worse over time. Let’s start with the most straightforward — did the concentration of air pollutants go up or down during President Obama’s tenure?

Between 2010 and 2016, which makes up the bulk of his presidency, the concentrations of all six air pollutants the EPA monitors decreased, some by as much as 77 percent. This makes sense, because cars, power plants, factories and other sources decreased emissions of these pollutants during this same period.

However, emissions haven’t decreased just during this period — they’ve been decreasing since the inception of the Clean Air Act in 1970.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA regulates carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ground level ozone, particle pollution and sulfur dioxide. Each of these pollutants pose a risk to human health, the environment or both.

Particle pollution, for example, gets into the air via smokestacks, fires and other sources and can cause both respiratory and heart issues. It can also reduce visibility and damage forests, crops and water sources.

Unlike particulate matter, ground level ozone isn’t emitted directly into the air. It’s created when pollutants from cars, power plants and other sources react to sunlight. Ground level ozone shouldn’t be confused with the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, which protects the planet from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

How Many Still Breathe ‘Unhealthy’ Air?

Another metric for air quality is the percentage of people in the country exposed to concentrations of air pollutants above the EPA’s standards. That’s what Pruitt means by 40 percent “nonattainment.” By this measure, air quality also improved under Obama.

When we reached out to the EPA for comment on Pruitt’s claim, agency spokeswoman Liz Bowman said he was “primarily” referring to ozone when he said the country is at 40 percent nonattainment.

Specifically, Bowman referred us to the page on the EPA’s website that gives regional and population-based nonattainment estimates for ozone’s older 2008 standard – which was strengthened by Obama along with the standards for nitrogen dioxide, particle pollution and sulfur dioxide. It wasn’t clear to us how data based on an outdated standard supported Pruitt’s claim. We asked for clarification, but she has yet to respond.

*Refers to the share of Americans who live in areas that don’t meet the EPA’s air quality standards, according to the American Lung Association reports.

Bowman also referred us to the American Lung Association’s 2017 air quality report that found that, between 2013 and 2015, 38.9 percent of the population — or about 125 million people — lived in areas with air that didn’t meet the EPA’s current standards for particle pollution or ozone (see table to left).

However, that report says there had been a “major improvement” in air quality under Obama.

According to the association’s 2010 report, between 2006 and 2008, before Obama took office in 2009, about 58 percent of the U.S. population — an estimated 175.3 million people — lived in areas where the levels of these two pollutants were worse than the EPA’s standards.

That’s an estimated 50 million fewer people living in nonattainment areas during Obama’s second term than before he took office.

The association attributes the lion’s share of these improvements “to cleaner power plants and increased use of cleaner vehicles and engines.”

Obama lowered the acceptable concentration of ozone in the air in 2015, and the American Lung Association began using the more strict standard on ozone in its 2016 report – even though that report covered 2012-2014. This initially increased the number of people living in nonattainment areas, but the figure then dropped. “One-quarter fewer people now live where the air quality hit unhealthy levels in 2013-2015 than in the 2016 report,” the ALA said in its most recent report.

During his presidency, Obama also finalized rules to increase fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. Higher fuel efficiency leads to less emissions, which contribute to both ozone and particle matter pollution. The average EPA city/highway sticker mileage of light duty vehicles sold rose from 21 miles per gallon in January 2009, when Obama took office, to 25.1 mpg by the time he left, according to the Transportation Research Institute of the University of Michigan.

However, President Donald Trump said in March that he may roll back some of these Obama-era rules. At that time, Pruitt said he supported the review of Obama’s standards, calling them “costly for automakers and the American people.”

Despite improvements in air quality, the American Lung Association concluded in 2017 that “too many people in the United States live where the air is unhealthy for them to breathe.”

Climate Change Affects Air Quality, Too

Pruitt has repeatedly criticized Obama on air quality issues. As we already mentioned, he made similar claims on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show back in May.

In February, Pruitt also criticized Obama for being “so focused on climate change and so focused on CO2” that “other priorities were left behind.” These other priorities included “air quality issues and water quality issues that cross state lines.”

But it’s worth mentioning that the American Lung Association reports have emphasized that climate change will hinder efforts to further improve air quality.

In fact, the associationattributes the 5 percent increase in the population exposed to “unhealthy” levels of ozone or particle pollution between its 2013 and 2014 reports (see table above) primarily to “warmer temperatures” worsening ozone levels. “Sunlight and heat create conditions that increase the risk of high ozone levels,” the association explains.

As we said, Pruitt is entitled to his opinion of Obama’s environmental record. But Pruitt cited a statistic without context, and the evidence shows air quality actually improved under Obama.

Editor’s Note: SciCheck is made possible by a grant from the Stanton Foundation.